The High Cost of Concert Tickets: Are Live Shows Too Expensive? Concert ticket prices are skyrocketing, leaving fans facing tough choices. From Taylor Swift to Beyoncé, securing seats for top artists can cost a fortune, forcing fans to consider extreme measures like international travel to save money. This article explores the factors driving up ticket prices, including the role of Ticketmaster and Live Nation, and examines whether the cost of seeing live music has become unsustainable
Concert Ticket Prices Soar: 2024 Average Hits $135.92. Pollstar data reveals a significant increase in average ticket prices for top tours, reaching $135.92 in 2024, despite a slight recent dip. This compares to $96.17 in 2019 and a mere $25.81 in 1996. High-demand shows, especially on resale markets, command even higher, shocking prices
Ticketmaster: Monopoly or scapegoat? The Live Nation-Ticketmaster merger (2010) faces intense scrutiny, with the Department of Justice alleging monopolistic practices and calling for a breakup. Live Nation vehemently denies these claims, dismissing the lawsuit as a publicity stunt. Soaring concert ticket prices, averaging $135.92 in 2024 for top tours, fuel the debate, leaving fans questioning the true culprits behind inflated costs
Soaring concert ticket prices: Is Ticketmaster to blame? Experts reveal the complex factors driving up costs, from inflation and rising tour expenses to the role of resellers like StubHub and Vivid Seats. While breaking up Ticketmaster might help, the solution is far more nuanced. Discover the economic forces impacting artists and fans alike, and why affordable concert tickets remain elusive
The high cost of concert tickets is a complex problem with no single villain. While Ticketmaster faces intense scrutiny, the issue involves multiple contributing factors beyond just one company
Soaring concert ticket prices continue to challenge music fans. While there's hope for some inflation relief, expect to pay significantly more than you might want to see your favorite artists live. High-demand shows, especially on resale markets, can be exceptionally expensive
Soaring concert ticket prices: Why are shows so expensive? The shift from album sales to touring revenue explains much of the increase. Musicians now rely heavily on live performances, leading to higher ticket costs and more frequent tours. This change in the music industry's revenue model significantly impacts ticket prices for fans
Musician David Lowery (Camper Van Beethoven, Cracker) explains the surge in touring: declining recorded music revenue forced artists to heavily rely on live performances to survive. This shift impacts fans facing soaring concert ticket prices
Soaring Concert Ticket Prices: Why Seeing Your Favorite Artists Costs a Fortune
Live music's rising costs are hitting fans hard. Inflation, increased production expenses (equipment, labor, venue fees), and the pressure on artists to deliver increasingly elaborate shows with complex visuals and staging are all contributing factors. This arms race among artists, fueled by social media's impact and the expectation of spectacular performances, has driven ticket prices to record highs. While Ticketmaster's role is often debated, the reality is that multiple factors are pushing the cost of seeing live music beyond what many fans can afford. The average ticket price for top tours in 2024 reached $135.92, a significant increase from previous years
Rising concert ticket prices: Why are shows so expensive? Industry veteran David "5-1" Norman, who's toured with Prince, Green Day, and Alicia Keys (and is currently on Cyndi Lauper's farewell tour), reveals the escalating costs. Competition drives artists to stage ever-larger productions, boosting social media buzz and sales, but significantly increasing expenses. Norman's current tour involves 80 people—from support acts to truck and bus drivers—highlighting the substantial operational costs, even with budget-conscious planning
Concert ticket prices: Why are shows so expensive? The high cost of live music is driven by supply and demand. Artists and their teams often set higher initial prices to offset the inflated resale market. Scalpers capitalize on this, reselling tickets for significantly more – for example, a $50 ticket might fetch $200 on the secondary market, leaving artists with substantial lost revenue. This dynamic contributes to the ever-increasing cost of attending concerts
Avoid ticket price gouging: Industry expert Jarred Arfa (Independent Artist Group, representing 50 Cent, Billy Joel, and Metallica) warns against underpricing concert tickets, as this simply subsidizes resale markets like StubHub, costing artists valuable revenue
Soaring concert ticket prices frustrate fans, and both primary (Ticketmaster, SeatGeek) and secondary (StubHub, Vivid Seats) ticket marketplaces contribute to the problem, leaving many wondering how much they're willing to pay for their favorite artists
Live Nation-Ticketmaster's Dominance of the Live Music Industry: A Monopoly? The merged entity controls artist management, concert promotion, venue operations, and ticketing, wielding significant power over pricing and fan data. Their grip on primary ticket sales at major venues is near-total, extending even into the secondary market. This dominance fuels debate over rising concert ticket costs and accusations of monopolistic practices
Live Nation-Ticketmaster's dominance sparks controversy, with critics alleging monopolistic practices that inflate ticket prices and exploit venues. The DOJ's antitrust lawsuit claims the merged entity extorts both independent venues and concertgoers, while Live Nation counters that these accusations are baseless and cynically motivated. High ticket prices, particularly on the secondary market, fuel the debate surrounding the company's market power and its impact on the live music industry
Venue managers, artists, the DOJ, and competitors say Live Nation’s dominance compels acts and venues to work with it. If an amphitheater or club spurns selling on Ticketmaster, it may not get a show at all, because Live Nation will divert artists and events to other locations. Some of those same critics note that power gives Ticketmaster a lot of wiggle room for charging exorbitant add-on fees that don’t generally go to the artist or the venue itself. By one 2018 estimate from the Government Accountability Office, ticketing companies charged more than a quarter of a ticket’s price in fees. Live events platforms now have to disclose the total cost up front, but it’s still fee-palooza for many of them.
“This vertically integrated monopoly in concert promotion and venue management and ticketing gives them this sort of enormous wingspan. With that kind of market power, you can set whatever fees you want,” says Diana Moss, vice president and director of competition policy at the Progressive Policy Institute.
Ticketmaster also uses dynamic pricing, which means ticket prices fluctuate based on a show’s popularity and fan demand. The company says that it’s on the artists and their teams — not them — to implement the strategy and that price adjustments are not done by an algorithm.
“Every price on Ticketmaster has been set by a human being,” Dan Wall, the executive vice president for corporate and regulatory affairs at Live Nation, told Business Insider reporters. “Ticketing companies shouldn’t be changing these prices. We don’t change these prices. It’s always the artist’s decision.”
Dynamic pricing and fees aside, many observers note that Live Nation’s dominance gives it little incentive to improve. New entrants that may challenge it or create better ticketing methods can’t get a foot in the door. They could make fan-to-fan ticket transfers easier, have more dynamic inventory flows, or create different recommendation models. There are some upstarts out there, but they’re generally small. Instead, the entire live events industry is sort of stuck with Live Nation and Ticketmaster.
“The one thing that technology has not made our life easier about is ticketing,” says Gary Witt, the CEO and co-owner of The Pabst Theater Group in Milwaukee. “Basically, monopolies kill progress, and they stop growth of anything that has any level of creativity in the market.”
The primary market may be a headache-inducing experience for artists, venues, and fans, but that pain is compounded by the secondary market. Many people have had the experience of going online to see all the tickets for an event almost immediately sell out on the primary market and suddenly appear on resell sites for exponentially higher amounts.
In search results, resale tickets often appear before primary tickets, which confuses consumers and makes them think prices are much higher. Stephen Parker, the executive director of the National Independent Venue Association, a trade group, shared a couple of resale horror stories — one New Orleans venue saw its $10 apiece tickets show up as a $700 four-pack online, and parents reported seeing high-priced resale tickets for a children’s production of The Lion King in Illinois. The BOTS Act, signed into law in 2016, was supposed to prevent operations from scooping up tickets online en masse and reselling them, but it hasn’t been that effective in stopping scalpers.
“It either hasn’t been enforced or it’s difficult to enforce,” Lowery says.
Sometimes, the actual tickets aren’t even on sale at all when they start to show up on reseller sites. This is called speculative ticketing. People list the tickets before the day of the initial sale, hoping to flip them. In nightmare scenarios, the speculator is unable to get them, leaving the purchasers out of luck. Sometimes it’s even scammier: The sections and seats supposedly for sale never even exist, or scalpers market the shows incorrectly. A friend of mine recently flew to a Formula 1 race in Dubai, only to realize she’d gotten speculative tickets that never came through. The day I talked to Witt, he was about to launch tickets for a Widespread Panic show at one of his venues in Milwaukee. He bet me — correctly — that I could already find tickets listed by resellers online, for much more than their yet-to-be-available face value.
“Since the Ticketmaster Live Nation merger went through, in addition to all the problems that followed from that merger, we’ve just seen this explosive growth in the resale industry,” says Erickson, from the Future of Music Coalition.
Secondary marketplaces say they’re injecting much-needed competition for Ticketmaster, but that’s not really true, at least when it comes to primary market sales. “They’re competing with fans to get those tickets,” Erickson says of the resellers.
Because the ticket pricing problem is complicated, so are the potential solutions. Different industry players blame one another. StubHub and SeatGeek say Ticketmaster is the problem. Ticketmaster and Live Nation say their integration is actually helpful for artists and fans. Reasonable minds can also ask whether streamers such as Spotify are being fair with the payouts they give artists, especially to smaller artists, or whether record companies are keeping too much for themselves. There’s also been a rabid demand for live events and in-person experiences among fans in the wake of the pandemic, which has had a price-increasing effect and perhaps comes at the expense of up-and-coming artists.
“It also takes away from the potential of people wanting to discover music, because they’re basically spending what they would’ve spent on a family vacation to go sit 3000 feet away from Taylor Swift in a football stadium,” Witt says.
Many people I spoke with acknowledged that while breaking up Live Nation and Ticketmaster may not be a panacea, it’s a good step. It could help with innovation and bring costs down — when companies have to contend with one another, it generally forces them to do better on multiple fronts.
“We might just have a better, more dynamic market,” Lowery says.
The Justice Department seems to agree. In its complaint against Live Nation, the DOJ says the company’s conduct and contract exclusivity block promotions, ticketing competitors, and business models from emerging. It says it bars venues from using other ticketers who would “compete by offering the best mix of prices, fees, quality, and innovation to fans.” In a public statement on the DOJ’s lawsuit, Live Nation says the move “won’t solve the issues fans care about relating to ticket prices, service fees, and access to in-demand shows,” notes that Ticketmaster’s market share has declined since 2010.
It’s worth saying that complaints about Ticketmaster dominating the ticketing industry predate the Live Nation merger — Pearl Jam tried to take it on in the 1990s. Harper, from the Economic Liberties Project, says that’s why a Live Nation breakup is just one piece of the puzzle. There are other policy levers that can be pulled, she adds, such as barring Ticketmaster from having long-term exclusivity contracts with venues, which would allow them to work with multiple ticketing platforms.
In an email, a Ticketmaster spokesperson argues that venues “hardly ever want to have two primary ticketing companies” and that exclusivity gives them the best deals.
There is a lively debate about what to do with secondary markets. The platforms say that they do not allow for speculative ticketing and that they’re fighting bots and scalpers, though clearly, a fair amount of activity is slipping through the cracks.
Giving artists more control over how their tickets can be resold could be a step in the right direction. Massachusetts, for example, has a law that lets artists limit a ticket’s transferability. Minnesota bars tickets from being sold online before the tickets are actually available to the public. Ticketmaster also has a feature giving artists and organizers the ability to implement a face-value ticket exchange that lets fans sell tickets to one another if they can’t use them but is intended to keep scalpers out. On the other end, some states have laws requiring unlimited ticket resales, including New York, Colorado, and Connecticut. The argument is that fans should have the freedom to do whatever they want with their tickets. In these places, there’s not much artists can do.
“One of the most deceptive things that the resale industry has done has been to try and take away artists’ ability to protect their fans from these kinds of extractive practices and then done it under the banner of fans’ right to resell the ticket,” Erickson says.
There is evidence that limiting reselling is effective in keeping prices under control. In 2023, The Cure went to great lengths to squash dynamic pricing and require face value ticket exchanges. A study from the National Independent Talent Organization found that for the band’s dates in California, where resale restrictions are allowed, both the number of tickets resold and the profits resellers made were 90% less than in states where restrictions are barred.
To be sure, not everyone is on board with restricting resale or putting price caps on secondary tickets. Moss, from the Progressive Policy Institute, notes that resale tickets are often priced lower than primary tickets, balancing things out.
“It’s there to match up more fans with more artists so that they grow demand for their brand or for their production,” she says. “So it is perfectly acceptable for ticket prices to fluctuate above face value and below face value.”
Multiple European countries and some states in Australia have stiffer limits on ticket reselling and scalping, and economically and culturally, they’re not as accustomed to dynamic pricing, which helps keep prices in check. But there are drawbacks. Arfa, the talent agent, says artists don’t make as much money in Europe, which makes it less compelling to tour there. A SeatGeek representative also says that limiting reselling too strictly leads to more nefarious activity and fraud — people buying tickets off of some sketchy guy on the internet or on the corner outside the venue. A StubHub spokesperson echoes the argument, pointing to evidence in Europe and Australia that places with ticket caps see higher fraud incidences and the 2018 GAO report that said price caps were difficult to enforce.
Oddly enough, one way for resale prices to get under control could be for the original tickets to be more expensive when they’re first for sale. It’s hard to guess what price the market will actually bear — hence why some acts have been overestimating interest in their tours — but if agents and promoters guess the price better ahead of time, it may cut down on how far above that initial number resellers can go.
As Pollstar found, ticket prices are falling a bit this year. An important part of the explanation: the economy is rocky. People are anxious about tariffs and the possibility of a recession. They’re on edge about the job market and overall economic, political, and global instability. If you’re worried about conflict in the Middle East or a flare-up in inflation, you may think twice about scooping up those high-priced tickets.
“Those artists where they’re quite not as bulletproof, à la Taylor or Morgan Wallen or something that has such heat, I think those types of artists will need to adjust pricing,” Arfa says.
Still, as long as demand for live events and concerts remains high, that’s to some extent going to keep prices high, too. There is some limit to how much fans are willing to pay, but it’s more than many observers perhaps would have bargained for five, 10 years ago. As long as we’re all clamoring to see the same music acts, prices aren’t going to meaningfully come down.
The ticketing industry is big and messy, and there are sort of no heroes here. And when many of the players — especially the corporate ones — are at least a little bit villainous, it’s hard to vanquish them all.
Enxhi Dylgjeri contributed reporting to this story.
Emily Stewart is a senior correspondent at Business Insider, writing about business and the economy.
Business Insider’s Discourse stories provide perspectives on the day’s most pressing issues, informed by analysis, reporting, and expertise.
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